Legacy: Arthurian Saga (52 page)

The news met us at Caerleon.
Pascentius had attacked out of the north with his force of German
and Saxon allies, and the King had marched to Carlisle and defeated
him there. But afterwards, safely back at Winchester, he had fallen
ill. About this, rumors were rife. Some said that one of
Pascentius' men had come in disguise to Winchester where Ambrosius
lay abed of a chill, and had given him poison to drink. Some said
the man had come from Eosa. But the truth was the same; the King
was very sick at Winchester.

The king-star rose again that night,
looking, men said, like a fiery dragon, and trailing a cloud of
lesser stars like smoke. But it did not need the omen to tell me
what I had known since that night on the crest of Killare, when I
had vowed to carry the great stone from Ireland, and lay it upon
his grave.

So it was that we brought the stone
again to Amesbury, and I raised the fallen circles of the Giants'
Dance into their places for his monument. And at the next
Easter-time, in the city of London, Uther Pendragon was crowned
King.

BOOK V THE COMING OF THE
BEAR 1

Men said afterwards that the great
dragon star which blazed at Ambrosius' death, and from which Uther
took the royal name of Pendragon, was a baleful herald for the new
reign. And indeed, at the start, everything seemed to be against
Uther. It was as if the falling of Ambrosius' star was the signal
for his old enemies to rise again and crowd in from the darkened
edges of the land to destroy his successor. Octa, Hengist's son,
and Eosa his kinsman, counting themselves freed by Ambrosius' death
from their promise to stay north of his borders, called together
what force they could still muster for attack, and as soon as the
call went out, every disaffected element rose to it. Warriors
greedy for land and plunder crowded over afresh from Germany, the
remnants of Pascentius' Saxons joined with Gilloman's fleeing
Irish, and with whatever British thought themselves passed over by
the new King. Within a few weeks of Ambrosius' death Octa, with a
large army, was scouring the north like a wolf, and before the new
King could come up with him had destroyed cities and fortresses
clear down from the Wall of Hadrian to York. At York, Ambrosius'
strong city, he found the walls in good repair, the gates shut, and
men ready to defend themselves. He dragged up what siege engines he
had, and settled down to wait.

He must have known that Uther would
catch up with him there, but his numbers were such that he showed
no fear of the British. Afterwards they reckoned he had thirty
thousand men. Be that as it may, when Uther came up to raise the
siege with every man he could muster, the Saxons outnumbered the
British by more than two to one. It was a bloody engagement, and a
disastrous one. I think myself that Ambrosius' death had shaken the
kingdom; for all Uther's brilliant reputation as a soldier, he was
untried as supreme commander, and it was already known that he had
not his brother's calmness and judgment in the face of odds. What
he lacked in wisdom, he made up in bravery, but even that would not
defeat the odds that came against him that day at York. The British
broke and ran, and were saved only by the coming of dusk, which at
that time of year fell early. Uther -- with Gorlois of Cornwall,
his second in command -- managed to rally his remaining force near
the top of the small hill called Damen. This was steep, and offered
cover of a kind, cliffs and caves and thick hazelwoods, but this
could only be a temporary refuge from the Saxon host which
triumphantly circled the base of the hill, waiting for morning. It
was a desperate position for the British, and called for desperate
measures. Uther, grimly encamped in a cave, called his weary
captains together while the men snatched what rest they could, and
with them thrashed out a plan for outwitting the huge host waiting
for them at the foot of the hill. At first nobody had much idea
beyond the need to escape, but someone -- I heard later that it was
Gorlois -- pointed out that to retreat further was merely to
postpone defeat and the destruction of the new kingdom: if escape
was possible, then so was attack, and this seemed feasible if the
British did not wait until daylight, but used what element of
surprise there was in attacking downhill out of the dark and long
before the enemy expected it. Simple tactics, indeed, that the
Saxons might have expected from men so desperately trapped, but
Saxons are stupid fighters, and as I have said before, lacking in
discipline. It was almost certain that they would expect no move
till dawn, and that they slept soundly where they had lain down
that night, confident of victory, and with any luck three parts
drunken on the stores they had taken.

To do the Saxons justice, Octa had
posted scouts, and these were wide enough awake. But Gorlois' plan
worked, helped by a little mist which crept before dawn up from the
low ground and surrounded the base of the hill like a veil. Through
this, twice as large as life, and in numbers altogether deceiving,
the British came in a silent, stabbing rush at the first moment
when there was light enough to see one's way across the rocks.
Those Saxon outposts who were not cut down in silence, gave the
alarm, but too late. Warriors rolled over, cursing, snatching their
weapons up from where they lay beside them, but the British, silent
no longer, swept yelling across the half-sleeping host, and cut it
to pieces. It was finished before noon, and Octa and Eosa taken
prisoner. Before winter, with the north swept clear of Saxons, and
the burned longboats smoking quietly on the northern beaches, Uther
was back in London with his prisoners behind bars, making ready for
his coronation the following spring.

His battle with the Saxons, his near
defeat and subsequent sharp, brilliant victory, was all that the
reign needed. Men forgot the bale of Ambrosius' death, and talked
of the new King like a sun rising. His name was on everyone's lips,
from the nobles and warriors who crowded round him for gifts and
honors, to the workmen building his palaces, and the ladies of his
court flaunting new dresses like a field of poppies in a color
called Pendragon Red.

I saw him only once during these first
weeks. I was at Amesbury still, superintending the work of raising
the Giants' Dance. Tremorinus was in the north, but I had a good
team, and after their experience with the king-stone at Killare,
the men were eager to tackle the massive stones of the dance. For
the raising of the uprights, once we had aligned the stones, dug
the pits and sunk the guides, there was nothing that could not be
done with rope and shear-legs and plumb-line. It was with the great
lintels that the difficulty lay, but the miracle of the building of
the dance had been done countless years before, by the old
craftsmen who had shaped those gigantic stones to fit as surely one
into the other as wood dovetailed by a master carpenter. We had
only to find means to lift them. It was this which had exercised me
all those years, since I first saw the capped stones in Less
Britain, and began my calculations. Nor had I forgotten what I had
learned from the songs. In the end I had designed a wooden crib of
a kind which a modern engineer might have dismissed as primitive,
but which -- as the singer had been my witness -- had done the task
before, and would again. It was a slow business, but it worked. And
I suppose it was a marvelous enough sight to see those vast blocks
rising, stage by stage, and settling finally into their beds as
smoothly as if they had been made of tallow. It took two hundred
men to each stone as it was moved, drilled teams who worked by
numbers and who kept up their rhythms, as rowers do, by music. The
rhythms of the movement were of course laid down by the work, and
the tunes were old tunes that I remembered from my childhood; my
nurse had sung them to me, but she never sang the words that the
men sometimes set to them. These tended to be lively, indecent, and
intensely personal, and mostly concerning those in high places.
Neither Uther nor I was spared, though the songs were never sung
deliberately in my hearing. Moreover, when outsiders were present,
the words were either correct or indistinguishable. I heard it
said, long afterwards, that I moved the stones of the dance with
magic and with music. I suppose you might say that both are true. I
have thought, since, that this must have been how the story started
that Phoebus Apollo built with music the walls of Troy. But the
magic and the music that moved the Giants' Dance, I shared with the
blind singer of Kerrec.

Towards the middle of November the
frosts were sharp, and the work was finished. The last camp fire
was put out, and the last wagon-train of men and materials rolled
away south back to Sarum. Cadal had gone ahead of me into Amesbury.
I lingered, holding my fidgeting horse, until the wagons had rolled
out of sight over the edge of the plain and I was alone.

The sky hung over the silent plain
like a pewter bowl. It was still early in the day, and the grass
was white with frost. The thin winter sun painted long shadows from
the linked stones. I remembered the standing stone, and the white
frost, the bull and the blood and the smiling young god with the
fair hair. I looked down at the stone. They had buried him, I knew,
with his sword in his hand. I said to him: "We shall come back,
both of us, at the winter solstice." Then I left him and mounted my
horse, and rode towards Amesbury.

2

News came of Uther in December; he had
left London and ridden to Winchester for Christmas. I sent a
message, got no reply, and rode out once more with Cadal to where
the Giants' Dance stood frostbound and lonely in the center of the
plain. It was the twentieth of December.

In a fold of the ground just beyond
the Dance we tethered our horses and lit a fire. I had been afraid
that the night might be cloudy, but it was crisp and clear, with
the stars out in their swarms, like motes in moonlight.

"Get some sleep, if you can in this
cold," said Cadal. "I'll wake you before dawn. What makes you think
he'll come?" Then, when I made no reply: "Well, you're the
magician, you should know. Here, just in case your magic won't put
you to sleep, you'd better put the extra cloak on. I'll wake you in
time, so don't fret yourself."

I obeyed him, rolling myself in the
double thickness of wool, and lying near the fire with my head on
my saddle. I dozed rather than slept, conscious of the small noises
of the night surrounded by the immense stillness of that plain; the
rustle and crack of the fire, the sound of Cadal putting new wood
on it, the steady tearing sound of the horses grazing at hand, the
cry of a hunting owl in the air. And then, not long before dawn,
the sound I had been expecting; the steady beat of the earth
beneath my head which meant the approach of horses.

I sat up. Cadal, blear-eyed, spoke
morosely. "You've an hour yet, I reckon."

"Never mind. I've slept. Put your ear
to the ground, and tell me what you hear." He leaned down, listened
for perhaps five heartbeats, then was on his feet and making for
our horses. Men reacted quickly in those days to the sound of
horsemen in the night. I checked him. "It's all right. Uther. How
many horses do you reckon?"

"Twenty, perhaps thirty. Are you
sure?"

"Quite sure. Now get the horses
saddled and stay with them. I'm going in."

It was the hour between night and
morning when the air is still. They were coming at a gallop. It
seemed that the whole of the frozen plain beat with the sound. The
moon had gone. I waited beside the stone.

He left the troop some little way off,
and rode forward with only one companion. I did not think they had
yet seen me, though they must have seen the flicker of Cadal's
dying fire in the hollow. The night had been bright enough with
starlight, so they had been riding without torches, and their night
sight was good; the two of them came on at a fast canter straight
for the outer circle of the Dance, and at first I thought they
would ride straight in. But the horses pulled up short with a
crunch and slither of frost, and the King swung from the saddle. I
heard the jingle as he threw the reins to his companion. "Keep him
moving," I heard him say, and then he approached, a swift striding
shadow through the enormous shadows of the Dance.

"Merlin?"

"My lord?"

"You choose your times strangely. Did
it have to be the middle of the night?" He sounded wide awake and
no more gracious than usual. But he had come.

I said: "You wanted to see what I have
done here, and tonight is the night when I can show you. I am
grateful that you came."

"Show me what? A vision? Is this
another of your dreams? I warn you --"

"No. There's nothing of that here, not
now. But there is something I wanted you to see which can only be
seen tonight. For that, I'm afraid we shall have to wait a little
while."

"Long? It's cold."

"Not so long, my lord. Till
dawn."

He was standing the other side of the
king-stone from me, and in the faint starlight I saw him looking
down at it, with his head bent and a hand stroking his chin. "The
first time you stood beside this stone in the night, men say you
saw visions. Now they tell me in Winchester that as he lay dying he
spoke to you as if you were there in his bedchamber, standing at
the foot of the bed. Is this true?"